Pros
I’ve worked at the Berkeley Partnership for a couple of years and I would summarise it as follows:
Autonomy: you’re trusted to deliver and given a good deal of responsibility from your first client role, including owning the client relationships. You’ll typically be working client-side directly with senior management (think Directors, VPs, c-suite) as part of the client team and given the freedom to do it your way, but with a good level of oversight & support from your listening partner.
Challenging work: There’s an unwritten guiding principle that all consultant roles should be “Berkeley shaped” i.e. big, complex, high profile, working directly with senior stakeholders and often when there is a lot at stake and it must be ‘done right’. Only these types of roles justify value to the client and provide the consultant with the right stretch opportunities. Berkeley do not do ‘land and expand’ type work (no junior roles) and are very open/up front with clients about the type of work they should and should not be doing.
This means you’ll be stretched and will gain more experience/exposure and develop more quickly than you would in a bigger consultancy (this has been my experience anyway).
Variety of the work is good: strategy, operating model, programme delivery, change management are all sweet spots.
Culture: you get to work with like-minded, high performing people. No sales targets, no utilization targets, no internal promotion cycles really do mean everyone (including partners) are free to do the best and right thing for the client which is really refreshing. It’s a very sociable firm too and there’s always an event on and opportunities to go for breakfast/lunch/dinner/drinks.
There are also ample internal opportunities to get involved in, without the pressure of needing to do something “extra” e.g. small communities of practice, lots of social events, training – i.e. all the things you’d expect in a professional services firm and more. Berkeley also run & pay for externally led professional training. The focus on personal development and range of training opportunities are excellent.
Cons
No major cons from my experience. You’ll likely be ‘on your own’ on client site for many roles, but with support from your listening partner when needed. The consultant community is also really great at helping each other out. If you like to work as part of a big consulting ‘team’ and work things through internally before sharing with the client then Berkeley probably isn’t right for you. Some travel involved for some roles but that comes with the territory of being a consultant and Berkeley are really good at ensuring roles are right/will work for individual consultants.